Tweet THE LONG VIEW The new Filipino By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 06:08 AM July 05, 2017 The students who gathered at Edsa Dos were Edsa babies, products of the post-dictatorship society, imbued with the expectation that betrayal of the public good carried with it the threat of public protest in the streets. …

Tweet Crunchtime for peace is coming Manolo Quezon – The Explainer Posted at Jul 04 2017 04:02 AM Last month, the world marked the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War. This was the war between Israel and a pan-Arab coalition led by Egypt, which led to a stunning Israeli victory that hugely increased the size of …

Tweet THE LONG VIEW Peek-a-boo By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:08 AM June 28, 2017 This year the President has receded from public view thrice: in February for four days, and this month on June 12-16 and again on June 20-27. Two reasons for these absences have been given: rest, and catching up …

Tweet Lees behaving badly ABS-CBN News Posted at Jun 27 2017 04:31 AM | Updated as of Jun 27 2017 05:47 AM You might remember last week we looked at former President Sergio Osmeña and how he lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1961. Let’s return to him for a moment, because Yet his sunset years …

Tweet THE LONG VIEW Strategic drift By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer / 12:22 AM June 21, 2017 The most difficult way to conduct a war is to do it along two or more fronts. Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means. If so, one must ask: What …

Playbook for our times

The genius of a great villain lies in knowing that the decent, law-abiding family men and women viewing his antics may publicly proclaim that they loath him, but that they’re most likely secretly cheering him on—until he fails. This is in comparison to the crime-fighting goody two-shoes caped crusader types out to take him down, because Batman, beyond his costume, is not only boring, but a preachy upper-class twit. After all, the Joker likes to present himself to the public as an unfiltered truth-teller, a liberated soul out to do what everyone secretly wishes they could get away with.

If Tom Wolfe, with his linen suits and homburg hats, is a dandy among novelists, then Roger Stone, who dresses like an impeccably-tailored 1930s mobster, is a dandy among political operatives. He’s been called the “The Dirty Trickster,” by The New Yorker, and the “Sinister Forrest Gump of American Politics” by reporter Jeffrey Toobin.

Last Friday, Netflix released a documentary, “Get Me Roger Stone,” which extensively interviews Roger Stone (and Donald Trump), tracing the life and career of the man who claims he has been out to make The Donald president since 1988, and who claims paternity over the methods and messages of the winning Trump campaign.

Stone likes to brag he was the youngest (at 19) to be mentioned in the Watergate hearings. He takes pride in having been mentored by the notorious Roy Cohn, the lawyer-fixer who served everyone from Sen. Joseph McCarthy during his anti-communist witch hunts, to Ronald Reagan. (Like so many notables in our legal profession, Cohn used to say, “Don’t tell me the law. Tell me the judge.”)

Having helped elect Reagan, Stone partnered with Paul Manafort and Lee Atwaler to connect Washington’s powerful with clients like Ferdinand Marcos. His critics say he is a genius at being a publicity hound, but that his claims to being at the center of things is exaggerated.

Beyond chronicling its subject, the documentary relies on “Stone’s Rules”—the maxims he’s been plugging since 2009 when he came out with a book titled “Stone’s Rules for War, Politics, Food, Fashion, and Living”—to lay out today’s political landscape in terms of Stone’s life and time. Some of those mentioned in the film:

1.“The past is f—–g prologue.” Whether true or not, success today can always be explained as having been made possible by a conspiracy to betray past greatness, in Stone’s case, the unfair persecution of Richard Nixon. Think of the ongoing rehabilitation of Marcos.

2. “It is better to be infamous than to never be famous at all.” Only the weak and ineffectual worry about taste, tact, propriety and ethics. Say anything today to ensure being the headline tomorrow. You can always take it back, which guarantees another headline the day after.

3. “The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring.” (As Gideon Resnick of the Daily Beast pointed out, this was a famous quip of Oscar Wilde). No one likes the facts. No one likes reason. What people crave is excitement and to hear what they already believe.

4. “One man’s dirty trick is another man’s civil political action.” Everything is relative, so there is no good, or right, side; there is only the winning side, because to concede otherwise is to limit your ability to win at all costs.

5. “Hate is a more powerful motivator than love.” Perhaps the most basic insight of Stone’s political playbook. You must fuel rage, even if you have to invent facts, because rage is the best shield against argumentation, and instantly kills debate—and it brings people to the polls.

6. “To win, you must do everything”; 7. “Attack, attack, attack. Never defend”; 8. “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack”; 9. “A man isn’t finished when he’s defeated, he’s finished when he quits.” All self-explanatory, as well as 10. “Nothing is on the level.” There’s no such thing as good sportsmanship or a fair game.

The documentary ends with Stone sneering. “I revel in your hatred because if I weren’t effective, you wouldn’t hate me,” he says. And for this political cycle at least, in America and here, he can claim he’s been right—so far.

Trump’s new reality

Manolo Quezon – The Explainer

Posted at May 15 2017 09:52 PM

It was supposed to be huge. A big, beautiful firing, straight out of The Apprentice. So when President Donald J. Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, it was meant to project strength and decisiveness. Instead, it revived memories of alarming incidents from the past, and turned into a week of increasingly negative breaking news concerning the White House.

We need to take a step back to understand why. For Filipinos, media and our political class and perhaps a big subsection of the public, too, are hypersensitive to anything that reminds us of Ferdinand Marcos and how he instituted a dictatorship.

For Americans, their hypersensitivity involves Richard Nixon and the manner in which he tried to cover up the Watergate burglary during his reelection campaign in 1972. At one point, angry at Archibald Cox sending him a subpoena to obtain Nixon’s White House tapes of conversations with visitors and staff, Nixon decided to fire Cox, who’d been appointed as a special independent prosecutor to investigate him. Nixon ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson not only refused, but resigned in protest. So Nixon then went to the next in line, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, and ordered him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus also said no and quit. Finally, Robert Bork, the Solicitor-General of the United States who became acting Attorney General (that’s what they call their Secretary of Justice), complied. But the damage had been done and has come to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

The question that galvanized the American nation at the time was, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” It eventually reached the point where Congress decided it had to impeach Nixon, who resigned when he was told he would be convicted by the Senate.

In the case of James Comey, the issues boil down to these. There are allegations of improper dealings between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. The FBI opened an investigation in the midst of the 2016 campaign. Once elected president, Trump talked to FBI Director Comey not once, or twice, but four times, allegedly asking each time if he could rely on the personal loyalty of Comey, who also allegedly replied that Trump could rely on Comey to tell the truth.

That’s the first issue –the impropriety of an American official, the President no less, inquiring into an investigation about himself and his team.

The next issue was, when did Trump decide to fire Comey, and why did the story keep changing? When Trump finally announced he’d fired Comey, he did it during a cable channel interview and didn’t even bother to tell the FBI director, who got the news as he was in a gathering to address FBI staff in California. Then the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, told the media the firing was due to Comey’s handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton. Over the next couple of days, the White House said it was the Department of Justice, and not the Trump, that insisted Comey had to go. They pointed to a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod H. Rosenstein as the reason (the Attorney General, former senator Jeff Sessions, had previously inhibited himself from the investigation).

That’s what Vice-President Pence told the media, too. As did the Deputy Press Secretary –only for Trump to insist that no, their DOJ didn’t decide, he did –and in fact he’d made up his mind to kick out Comey months ago. The White House scampered to backtrack, even as Trump took to tweeting angrier and angrier tweets about the whole thing, including tweeting a threat that Comey had better be careful about what he says, because who knows, there might be recordings of his conversations with Trump.

As you’d expect, this was all too much a case of déjà vu for the media to take in its stride. Not only had the White House and the Vice President and the DOJ been left with egg on their faces, but the behavior of Trump’s been too Nixonian to ignore.

But here’s the difference. Back in the early 1970s, the US Congress –both House and Senate—were in the hands of the Democrats even though the White House was in Republican hands. Today, Congress is firmly under Republican control, and since US congressmen have two-year terms, they’re all gearing up for next year’s mid-term elections. Trump may be one of the most unpopular US Presidents in living memory, but he has a firm hand and high popularity among the Republican base of voters. And since Republicans have expertly set up House districts to be safe districts where it is almost impossible for Republicans to lose, at the back of their minds is the risk of criticizing an emotional president who just might campaign against them if they act disloyal.

It’s early days, yet. But among American pundits, aside from the political realities I’ve just outlined, there’s another reality. The FBI is one of the most trusted institutions in American public life, today, with a recent poll putting approval at 80%. Comey himself was deeply popular among FBI staff. His successor told Congress they stand by Comey as an institution. One American columnist observed in the PBS NewsHour, that the FBI is therefore highly motivated to investigate Trump and his people even more thoroughly than before.

There’s an old saying that you campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Trump is trying to prove that no, you can govern reality-TV-style. To be sure, the media, possibly the bureaucracy, and in private, probably most of the political class, are alarmed. Polling suggests the majority of Americans don’t approve of what Trump did –but it remains to be seen if this will have an effect on his political base, who serves as Trump’s insurance against any Republic daring to speak out against the president.

A study in schizophrenia

When Gina Lopez burst on the scene like some sort of environmental berserker, quite a few people applauded her passion and New Age enthusiasm. Keen watchers of the insider game in government viewed it as an interesting example of good cop, bad cop. A zealot can always be neutralized by the bureaucracy, as she quickly found out when the Executive Secretary, in typical bureaucratic style, blandly put the implementation of some of her decisions on hold.

In the end the Department of Finance weighed in, to the startling extent of Secretary Carlos Dominguez publicly picking a fight with Lopez not just in the papers but also before the Commission on Appointments. Congress, for its part, handled her inconvenient popularity in characteristic style. It instituted a long-delayed reform: the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule in the Commission on Appointments, to put an end to presidents simply reappointing bypassed Cabinet nominees; it placed a veil of secrecy over the votes taken in the commission itself; and its members took turns making pious speeches proclaiming fervent love for nature on one hand, and deep unease over the impact of too much environmentalism on the economy, on the other.

The result was death by a few dozen cuts. Slowly but surely, under the cover of entertaining chest-beating by the President, Lopez was bypassed once, twice, thrice—and declared to have struck out. Chest-beating in the Palace was replaced with a meek statement on the separation of powers, respect for Congress, the announcement that a replacement was being sought, and the designation of a new secretary within days.

The slow but sure removal of Gina Lopez and her swift replacement with Roy Cimatu are a study in contrasts. Her appointment was trumpeted as the coming of radical change. His marks a return to business as usual. He will be a good security guard—bad news for the New People’s Army and mixed news for miners and loggers, depending on how he is instructed to do his job.

That this possibility even exists is testimony to the nature of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources itself, a schizophrenic institution in which contrasting priorities—promoting and defending the environment or maximizing the profits that can be gained from extracting natural resources—will always be possible. The only remarkable thing is that it has happened so quickly, publicly, and ruthlessly in the same administration.

Prior to the creation of the DENR, natural resources were under the Department of the Interior in 1901-1916. Then, for decades, it formed part of the agriculture portfolio, hence the old Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources in 1917-1932 (renamed Department of Agriculture and Commerce in 1932-1947, with commerce being added to its mandate, and gaining the Bureau of Mines established in 1938 along the way) and 1947-1974. In 1974, a separate Department, then Ministry (starting in 1978), of Natural Resources was put in place until January 1987, when the Department of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources briefly came into being. Its current form was established in June of that year.

Shuffling portfolio responsibilities around during the Marcos years gave a bureaucratic sheen to things but papered over the acceleration of deforestation, with logging concessions being one of the keenly-sought-after political patronage plums that the president could hand out. The same applied to mining, with established mining companies subjected to hostile takeovers by political allies and relatives. The result was rebellion in the Cordilleras, and competition among the military, police, and NPA for protection money from loggers and miners.

Separating the environment from natural resources during the dictatorship arguably didn’t help the environment, but neither has combining the two since 1987.

It’s entirely possible it has made things worse, since by its very nature a combined natural resources and environmental department will always be at the mercy of a legislature with members looking out for their—or their allies’—interests, and of a presidency that, by its very design, is held hostage by political parties in large part funded, if not actually owned, by business magnates. The environment can wait.

So perhaps it’s time to consider what was proposed about a decade ago: Separate the two functions. It couldn’t be worse than the status quo.

Threat born of insecurity

The American humorist Will Rogers put it best when he quipped that the best job in the country is the vice president’s: “All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ‘How is the president?’” At least in the United States, the veep gets to break a tie when one occurs during voting in the Senate. Here, the only work the vice president has is whatever the president decides to assign—or not. This is due to two things. When the vice presidency was established, the country had decided to experiment with unicameralism and there was no way you could have an executive official presiding over its sessions. Second, a strong presidency was envisioned, and it was impractical and possibly dangerous to tie the hands of the chief executive by specifying a task for the vice president.

Then again it was also reasonable then, and even when the Senate was restored in 1941, to assume presidents and veeps would operate as a team. In the days when party affiliation counted for something, and party conventions put together tickets with regional as well as national appeal, chances were rivalries could be set aside for the duration of the term. It also meant that the electorate, as a rule, also viewed candidates for the presidency and vice presidency as a ticket. Voters could—and still can, and indeed, nowadays, they generally do—vote split tickets. But on the whole, they did not.

That is, until the party system started to break down: it’s no coincidence that the first presidential election that produced a minority president—Carlos P. Garcia, in 1957—was also the first election in which the president and vice president came from different parties: Garcia was a Nacionalista, Diosdado Macapagal was a Liberal. The two parties had their last competitive conventions in 1965 (for the Nacionalistas, when Marcos defeated former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez, who up to 2016 was the highest-ranking Mindanaoan elected to national office) and 1969 (for the Liberals, who nominated Sergio Osmeña Jr.).

Since then, presidential and vice presidential campaigns have been personal coalitions. Party affiliation is more of a financial question (as parties are bankrolled, or headed, by business interests) and a vehicle for logistical requirements like precinct watchers. With no incentive to think in terms of a ticket, candidates, supporters and the electorate have little concern for whether the eventual winners will get along, or not. They may even harbor a kind of malicious glee in ensuring the opposite by voting for candidates they know will rub each other the wrong way, out of a kind of instinctive sense of checks-and-balances.

What is odd is that when the presidential system was modified by the framers of the 1987 Constitution, no one seems to have bothered to ask why it was that Filipinos voted for the president and vice president separately in the first place. In 1935 when that decision was made by the framers of an earlier constitution, voting for the two top positions separately was part of the nation-building exercise of the era. Knowing they were instituting national elections for the first time, it was crucial to ensure that both the president and the vice president (whose job it would be to assume the presidency in case of emergency) had iron-clad mandates the people would respect. Having a two-party system ensured mandates would be majority ones; voting separately ensured no vice president could be brushed off as lacking an individual mandate.

Since 1987 veeps are either a threat to neutralize, or, in the rare exception when a ticket won, to fill with a person so unsuited to be president, their holding the job would in turn help the president keep theirs. What is unique, now, is that there is no strategic patience on the part of the ruling coalition. To dangle impeaching the veep is to reveal they lack confidence in the future.

The bare necessities

Manolo Quezon – The Explainer

Posted at May 02 2017 12:56 AM

Before there was Francis Magalona, there was his grandfather, Enrique Magalona, assemblyman for Negros Occidental. In 1936, he wrote a letter to the president proposing a minimum wage for government laborers.

The reply he got on August 5, 1936 contains two interesting nuggets of information. First, it was laborers in Davao City, in that same year, who first petitioned for a minimum daily wage. So if we want to be thankful to anyone for whatever minimum wage exists, thank those anonymous laborers in Davao 81 years ago.

Second, in the response to Magalona, it was pointed out that one problem with a national minimum wage was that the cost of living differed throughout the country, and that should be considered a factor in determining wages.

By November of that year, 1936, Commonwealth Act. No. 211 was passed, establishing a daily minimum wage for government laborers. This was part of a package of legislation we now take for granted: it was in 1936, too, that the eight-hour work day was set, and overtime established for those working beyond eight hours. The amount of that original minimum wage was the princely sum of one peso, soon raised to one peso, twenty-five centavos.

This discussion from 1936 continues to this day. Eighty years after the first minimum daily wage was enacted, NEDA rejected a proposed nationwide daily wage in 2016.

But we have seesawed between regional wage-setting, and nationwide wages over the years. We got a nationwide, public and private sector minimum wage law, under the administration of Elpidio Quirino. This established one minimum wage for the entire country in 1951. By the time President Marcos decreed the Labor Code in 1974, the philosophy had changed to different sectors having different minimum wages. Then in July, 1989, the present setup was established, where geography and industry determined minimum wages. Nowadays, Regional Wage Boards determine the minimum wage essentially on an annual basis.

The basic logic of a high minimum wage was best put into practice by Henry Ford, father of the modern assembly line. His logic was simple. If you pay your workers a high daily wage, they will have a higher disposable income. That income would allow your Ford Factory worker to buy Ford motorcars. Everybody happy. Later on, however, when Ford workers decided they should unionize, Henry Ford became one of the most ruthless union-busters. Which tells you one problem labor has with capital: capital views benefits and wages as a favor; laborers view it as a right; the clash, if it isn’t to get out of hand, requires government to step in, which is why we have labor laws to guarantee minimum benefits and rights to workers.

Of course government plays a balancing act: political leaders are financed by capital, not by labor. But labor has the votes. Which is why, regardless of the screaming of capital when it happens, at least once a year, government likes to play Santa Claus and decree wage hikes to please labor.

But is there such a thing as going back to basics and testing to see if data really backs up the whole idea of a minimum wage? Let me share with you one interesting effort in this regard.

It’s a December 2016 paper published by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies or PIDS. It tackles this question: what does the minimum wage aim to achieve? And, does it achieve those aims?

A couple of 2014 studies quoted by the PIDS on the legal minimum wage brought up four troubling points. Let me summarize them for you.

1. Following an increase in the minimum wage, the hours of work significantly declined, and the probability, or chances, of getting a job or keeping it, fell by 8%.
2. The minimum wage had a “significant” negative effect on the ability of all individuals to find work. But it had a particularly negative one among young, inexperienced, less educated, and women workers. The researchers assumed this was because these types of workers had lower levels of productivity compared to older, more educated, experienced and male workers. The study suggested that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would lead to the following declines in the labor participation rate: “by -6.36% (for all workers), by -5.97% and -3.64% (among teenagers and young adults relative to 50 years old and over), and by -2.36% (no schooling relative to college educated).”
3. The average real income of households would have grown by about 20% if the minimum wage had increased more slowly. Not only that, but household poverty would have been lower. The reason for this is that if you had one minimum wage worker in your family, you would be earning less than another household in which the wife and perhaps the older children, were also working but at non-minimum wage jobs. The study also observed that a faster rate in the increase of the minimum wage significantly increases povery incidence by 1.7 to 3 percentage points.
4. Finally, the minimum wage, according to one of the studies, had a “significant” adverse impact on employment by smaller firms. These are companies defined as having average assets below 1.1 Billion pesos. On the other hand, larger companies (those with an asset size above 1.1 Billion) had less of a negative, and sometimes a positive one.

So what did PIDS conclude?

First, there is a difference between theory and reality. Theory, PIDS says, actually puts forward three possible effects of a minimum wage on employment: positive, negative or zero, “depending on one’s assumptions about the market situation and the underlying mechanisms governing wages and employment decisions.”

Second, by looking at the actual empirical data, the result is a mixed story. PIDS says in developed countries, the effect of a minimum wage “tends to be negligible or slightly positive.” This is the basis for proponents of a large minimum wage increase here at home.

Third, when PIDS conducted empirical studies that it says “were rigorously done using Philippines data,” what works abroad did not work here at home. PIDS said that raising the minimum wage “had [a] statistically and quantitatively significant negative impact on employment and hours of work.” It added that raising the minimum wage had an even greater negative impact on already disadvantaged sub-groups. It also observed that larger hikes in the minimum wage “tend to reduce average household income and raise the prevalence rare of poverty.”

The lesson PIDS drew from all this is a simple one: what works abroad does not necessarily work at home. Before you think the study should be a cause for celebration for capitalists who hate the idea of minimum anything for workers, think again. All PIDS calls for, is a more scientific, evidence-based approach. Go back to the drawing board, in other words. Find a better way to give labor its due.

ASEAN and the Elephant in the Room

ILLUSTRATOR War Espejo(SPOT.ph) ASEAN marks its 50th anniversary with a summit in Manila this weekend. Member countries take turns hosting the annual top-level talkfest, but Malaysia gave up its slot, which is why we’ve ended up being the host. Like the European Union or the Organization of American States, ASEAN aims to foster cooperation among countries that belong to a particular region. We are a large region, a young one, and an increasingly rich one.

A lot of work goes into high-level summits like this one, but by the time they take place, most of the work has been done (as far as the member governments and the leaders that head them are concerned). In a sense, the summit then, is like an unveiling of the results of meetings and discussions that have been taking part over the past year, and to kick off the next round. A lot of the work involves paperwork: the announcement of what took place and why it matters (in diplomatic language, a communiqué); the various agreements that formalize, because the leaders have committed, the association’s goals; and the statements and speeches of individual leaders during the summit.

All of this effort is to ensure that the summit goes smoothly, avoiding the one thing all countries hate: surprises. ASEAN, in particular, because of its history of strongmen leaders with healthy egos and past friction between individual member states, has a tradition of insisting on consensus in all things. The thing about consensus is, it’s hard to achieve; and when it doesn’t exist, then the ASEAN tradition is to set aside the topic.

In the 2017 summit, the elephant in the room is the People’s Republic of China. The Philippines is not alone in having a complicated relationship with this emerging superpower. Over the past few years, quite a few ASEAN member states have had disagreements with China or have been alarmed by Chinese actions. Malaysia was alarmed by a Chinese naval exercise that simulated an amphibious assault; Singapore has had its armored personnel carriers used in military exercises in Taiwan, impounded as they were being shipped home through Hong Kong. Indonesia has taken to blowing up Chinese fishing vessels it apprehended in its waters, while the Philippines famously filed—and won—an arbitration case against China. Vietnam, too, has taken a firm position against China when it comes to the West Philippine Sea.

On the other hand, Brunei has been warming up to China while Cambodia is widely considered as the spokesman for Chinese interests in ASEAN. So even if a sizeable number of ASEAN member countries might want to come together to pursue a firmer line concerning China and the region’s waters, the ASEAN tradition of operating by consensus means any statement requires an all-or-nothing approach.

A case in point is that news on Wednesday highlighted that the draft ASEAN communiqué makes no mention of the proposed Code of Conduct on the West Philippine Sea, an effort ongoing since the Ramos administration, for an agreement among nations in those contested waters, over what sort of behavior is allowed.

But China and the West Philippine Sea are only one item in an extensive agenda for the region. ASEAN operates on three tracks: as a political-security community; as an economic community; and as a socio-cultural community. In turn, member governments work together to achieve six “thematic” priorities: to have a “People-oriented and people-centered” association; to have peace and stability in the region; to ensure maritime security and cooperation; to obtain “inclusive, innovative growth,” to foster resiliency in member countries and in the region; and to be a model of successful regionalism as well as be a global player as a regional bloc. Progress on any one of these points is significant; on more than one point, even more so. And it can be argued that it is the slow, but sure, increase in cooperation between ASEAN countries and other regional powers that in the long run ensures stability and prosperity for the citizens of all the countries involved.

This is all the more remarkable because so many histories weigh heavily on our region. There are ancient rivalries and resentments, in the lands once occupied by kingdoms that ruled territories now comprising independent nations (think Thailand and Burma, or between Cambodia and Thailand); disputes between and among countries that came into being because their territories were defined by the colonial powers: think Malaysia and its tensions in the 1950s to the 1960s with the Philippines and Indonesia, or Malaysia’s expulsion of Singapore from its federation, and Indonesia and East Timor. There are ethnic tensions—on the basis of race, or religion, with rebellions in Mindanao, in the North of Thailand, among minorities in Myanmar, and massacres of the Chinese in the 1960s and 1990s in Indonesia while there was a racial basis to Malaysia and Singapore parting ways. And there is Superpower politics, whether the Cold War up to the 1990s, or China’s regaining its confidence in the 2000s.

And there are different political approaches as well. In a sense, the story of ASEAN in its first 50 years is also the story of an era of leaders who were either the founders of their countries, or the second generation of post-independence leaders. Men—and they were exclusively men—who built monolithic parties, were larger-than-life personalities, who molded their nations in their image. Only in the late 1990s and in this century, has the mantle of leadership passed on to leaders who never knew what it was like to be born the subject of a colonial power; and just as the priorities of creating a nation is different from sustaining it, so, too, have the challenges of leadership changed. People are less inclined to obey; political careers tend to be shorter; and globalization has given more and more ASEAN residents the power to vote with their feet.

Having reached the halfway mark, ASEAN can look at a region and a world different from that in which the organization first came into being. Whether absolute monarchies, party dictatorships, or democracies, what ASEAN feels in common is an increasing need to be bold in facing the rapidly evolving challenges of our world. And it is here where the communiqués matter less than the personal interactions among the leaders. Because all the policy briefings in the world can only get you so far. Statesmanship is still a personal affair; when one leader picks up that phone to try to avert a crisis or solve one, that personal touch and knowledge of the other person on the line, still counts for a lot.

His victims had a difficult time bringing him to trial. When they appealed to a court in Habré’s place of exile, Senegal, the court said it had no jurisdiction over crimes committed in another country. In 2005, after four years of investigations, a judge in Belgium issued a warrant for Habré’s arrest, as the Belgian constitution authorizes its courts to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity anywhere in the world.

What made Habré’s prosecution possible after decades of delay, was the precedent established by the arrest of the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, while he was in London in 1998. An arrest warrant had been issued by a Spanish court, which had accepted the case on the principle, in Spanish and international law, of “universal jurisdiction” for human rights crimes committed even if committed in Chile. The British courts rejected Pinochet’s assertion of immunity and said he could be extradited to Spain for trial (he managed to avoid extradition by being declared mentally incompetent to stand trial).

Using the “Pinochet precedent” as its argument, a case was again filed in Senegal and a judge ordered that the former dictator be placed under house arrest. Senegal, however kept changing its mind on whether to proceed with a trial, largely due to the question of who should fund it. Four extradition requests from Belgium were rejected in the meantime.

Another major breakthrough was the discovery, by Reed Brody, of the detailed records of the DDS: untouched and forgotten, in the former headquarters of the organization. As Brody recounted, an analysis revealed “The documents mention 12,321 victims of abuse, including the death in detention of 1,208 of them. Habré himself received 1,265 direct communications from the DDS about the status of 898 detainees.”

Finally, the African Union (the association of African countries) appealed to the then-president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, who relented. The Senegalese constitution was amended to permit war crimes and crimes against humanity prosecution in the country, even if it was committed elsewhere. Then Senegal decided it would extradite Habré to Chad, at which point the United Nations stepped in, saying doing so ran the risk of the ex-dictator being tortured in his home country. Finally, in 2012 the International Court of Justice at the Hague issued an order to Senegal: put him on trial immediately, or extradite him to Belgium.

In 2013 the Special African Chamber was established for the specific purpose of the trial of Habré. Lasting nine months, the trial resulted in a conviction on May 30, 2016 for crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, and rape. The ex-dictator was sentenced to life imprisonment in Senegal.

Human Rights Watch traces the concept of “universal jurisdiction” to the crime of piracy, since pirates would have been difficult to pin down if the law insisted on countries only trying cases involving crimes within their territory. For human rights, a similar principle operates: no violator of human rights should be able to enjoy a safe haven on the basis of national sovereignty. The UN Conventions on turture, genocide, and war crimes, ratified by many nations, further fortifies this principle.

The very existence of the International Criminal Court at the Hague bolsters these convenants, as it is precisely meant to be the “court of last resort” for the prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The ICC has convicted former heads of state and other leaders, for example, Jean-Pierre Bemba, former Vice President of the Congo was arrested in 2008 and convicted in 2016 (an additional year was added to his 18-year sentence just this year); ex-president Laurent Gbago of the Ivory Coast was ordered arrested in 2011 and his trial at the Hague began in 2016. President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan became the first incumbent head of state to be indicted by the ICC: he has two ICC arrest warrants on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity: 2009 and 2010 but remains free.

Bashir continues to visit countries uninterested in the Rome Statutes. While he remains in power, chances are he will remain a free man. But as Habré and his DDS discovered, your luck can eventually run out in the face of relentless prosecution for your crimes.

Why impeachment is a threat to President Duterte — even if everyone knows it won’t pass

By Manuel Quezon IIIApril 25

On April 8, in Navotas city in the Philippines, family members mourn a man who was allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade who was shot dead by unknown gunmen. (Francis R. Malasig/European Pressphoto Agency)

Manuel Quezon III is a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper and the host of the political affairs show “The Explainer” on the ABS-CBN TV news channel.

As Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was preparing to host ASEAN leaders in a summit in Manila this week, he received an unpleasant surprise. A Filipino lawyer, Jude Sabio, filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court (ICC), accusing Duterte and 11 others of crimes against humanity. His 77-page complaint puts forward the testimony of his clients, two self-confessed hired assassins who claim they took part in a campaign of liquidations stretching back to 1988, when Duterte became mayor of Davao City. By this account, the president’s current war on drugs, which has taken the lives of at least 4,000 people, is merely the latest installment in a long history of bloodletting.

These two witnesses have bedeviled the administration for months. Earlier this year, a Duterte ally, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, offered a glimpse of how the government aims to contain the allegations. One of Sabio’s clients, a police officer named Arturo Lascanas, confessed that he had personally participated in the liquidation of drug suspects and political enemies of the president. Lacson held a hearing, allowed Lascanas to make a statement and then promptly gaveled the hearing closed, forestalling sustained questioning and testimony on the matter.

But the issue won’t go away. Earlier this month, Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia, briefed reporters on the situation in the Philippines. “We however do have a very sustained and deep concern when elements of the drug war are operating outside the rule of law,” he said. “The growing number of extrajudicial killings is troubling.” At about the same time, Time Magazine released its 100 Most Influential list, which included both Duterte and one of his foremost critics, detained Sen. Leila de Lima.

Foreigners are not the only ones worried about how things are going. Public opinion within the Philippines is showing increasing unease with the drug war. In one recent poll, 73 percent of respondents said they were worried that they or someone they knew could become a victim of extrajudicial killings. (That was slightly down from 78 percent last December.) Filipinos remain divided on police claims that drug suspects who were killed resisted arrest: 24 percent said they believed the police, 31 percent said otherwise, while 44 percent are unsure.

This sets the stage for May 2, when the Philippine congress returns from its Holy Week recess to confront a festering problem: the impeachment complaint against Duterte, filed two days before the recess began in March.

The complaint was filed by House of Representatives member Gary Alejano. He is a highly decorated former military officer who was court-martialed in 2008 for leading a military mutiny in 2003 and joining another one in 2007. He is a political ally of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who has been a consistent thorn in Duterte’s side since the 2016 campaign.

The impeachment complaint accuses Duterte of “bribery, murder, and crimes against humanity” in his war on drugs, alleging a continuation of the death-squad methods Duterte pioneered during his long years as mayor of Davao City. It also charges that he committed graft and engaged in plunder by allegedly having 11,000 nonexistent people on his city payroll and supposedly pocketing the salaries, and claims that he failed to reveal all of his property and earnings in mandatory asset declarations. On March 30, Alejano added more claims (betraying public trust, culpable violation of the constitution and other “high crimes”) linked with the president’s policy of seeking closer relations with China at the cost of tolerating Chinese encroachment on Philippine territory in the South China Sea.

Neither Alejano nor the rest of the political opposition are optimistic about their impeachment effort per se. Duterte continues to enjoy overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, bolstered by the most recent opinion poll results, which remain very high: One recent survey gives Duterte 78 percent for performance and 76 percent for trust (both were at 83 percent in December). Another finds that 76 percent of respondents (from 77 percent in December) are satisfied with Duterte’s performance, which makes dismissal of the impeachment motion inevitable. Even a member of the former administration Liberal Party (today part of the current administration coalition in the House) said an impeachment at this time would be “divisive as well as polarizing.”

And, yet, even though impeachment proceedings are likely to go nowhere, the issue still presents a fundamental problem for Duterte. Alejano and company have stated quite openly that they see impeachment as a prelude to a case in the ICC against Duterte. Their assumption is that the ICC will be more inclined to act if it can be proven that accountability mechanisms under Philippine law are a dead end. Impeachment being dismissed on purely procedural grounds would prove this. Such a dismissal would strengthen the argument of his critics that an international case is required. The ruling coalition could, on the other hand, go through the motions of allowing witnesses to testify and submit evidence. This would be a risky move as it could start swaying public opinion beyond personal concerns over safety.

During the congressional recess, key witness Lascanas went to Singapore due to concerns for his safety. That did not stop other police sources from revealing information about a bounty system, allegedly instituted with official blessings, for the liquidation of drug suspects. The Philippine media has been giving time to the families of victims who have also begun to speak out against Duterte and the police. Officials have started muttering about a global conspiracy to bring down the president. One is inclined to wonder if Filipinos will believe them.

Damayan at dama

Manolo Quezon – The Explainer

Posted at Apr 25 2017 06:09 AM

In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon declared, “Property is theft.” Someone’s asset is someone else’s misfortune, in a place like Metro Manila, which has one of the highest levels of congestion in the region. As of 2010, we have 13,000 persons crammed into every square kilometer of the metropolis. Too many people, too little land.

Former President Ramos about a decade ago liked to point out the window of his Urban Bank office, and warn that unless something was done, the teeming hundreds of thousands in the slums might one day simply invade the homes and properties of the middle class and the wealthy, and take it for themselves.

In the countryside, the alternative to this has been land reform, unevenly implemented because many of the rule-makers belong to the landed class themselves, and because lacking the will to assume the costs of acquiring land for distribution, the cost of land is born by the impoverished farmers themselves. But if you can imagine a worse situation, consider urban land reform. It simply doesn’t exist, unless you count the so-called Lina Law, which property owners hate for conceding minimal rights to those who occupy the land of others.

There have been initial, very tentative, steps towards urban land reform. The previous administration shifted to a policy of in-city development, which means instead of evicting the urban poor and exiling them to the outskirts of the metropolis, there would be a preference, instead, to acquire the land occupied by the urban poor, and develop that. But the catch is that this policy expects the impoverished to somehow cough up the money to rent to own the property.

In the end complications at the expense of human dignity and opportunity arise because governments lack the nerve to forcibly acquire property, and develop it for the use of the urban poor. Doing this would require government not only to make a substantial investment of both money and political will, it would mean having to operate the housing projects: by build vertically and further subsidizing the rent, it could provide humane living conditions until beneficiaries could then hopefully work hard, and afford to move out and make way for others. But doing this would mean denying the beneficiaries permanent ownership of the units –but this is how many other governments do it, for socialized housing. Consider Quezon City which was meant to provide land for government buildings and socialized housing for government workers and the poor, with huge parks to ensure rest and recreation to communities designed to be fairly congested to make them affordable. The parks disappeared, given up to private commercial development, and large tracts of government land also ended up used for malls and the private sector, instead of public housing.

So we have the worst of all worlds. The poor are evicted, they are forced to move to far-flung areas, and told to buy houses they cannot afford and which occupies much more land than building vertically could provide, leaving many others without any access to housing whatsoever. What this does provide is financial opportunities aplenty: to land developers, contractors, and officials, while keeping the poor in a state of dependency and helplessness that is politically beneficial.

This is the heart of the matter when it comes to the drastic steps we’ve been seeing some organized urban poor groups doing lately. Mao Zedong once said, “…this protracted war will pass through three stages. The first stage covers the period of the enemy’s strategic offensive and our strategic defensive. The second stage will be the period of the enemy’s strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counter-offensive. The third stage will be the period of our strategic counter-offensive and the enemy’s strategic retreat.” For nearly fifty years that protracted war has taken place. In the previous administration, the government claimed the Communists were nearly extinct. Today, they hold seats in the cabinet and on March 27, the unthinkable happened. People claiming to be members of the New People’s Army appeared on EDSA and held a parade. That was a show of strength, in terms of the communist’s armed component. There are other ways of showing strength and commitment, as well.

After all, Karl Marx once wrote, “The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

Lenin once also wrote, “Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.”

So for local followers of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the transfer of property from private to collective hands, is among their paramount objectives. Looking around, a specific type of housing development provided a strategic opportunity. Meant for military and the police, as of March 20, the NHA reported a total of 5,262 units from Pandi and San Jose del Monte were taken over by an organization calling itself KADAMAY, supported by comrades from Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Akbayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anak Pawis and Kabataan Partylist. The ultimate fate of these housing units is within the influence of the president, whom both the military and police are trained not to question. These groups also hate the military and police. Occupying the units is thus a win-win: demonstrating, in graphic terms, the lack of housing for the poor, calling the President to turn his rhetoric into reality, and denying the enemies of these groups the housing they were promised.

There is also the opportunity to make an appeal for wider support from the public. In a Lenten message, Kadamay pointed out Bulacan is significant because a Commission on Audit report from 2013 said “the region had the highest number of amortization payments in arrears and accumulated debts.” Kadamay objects to housing problems being solved by means of businesses building low-quality housing which people cannot afford.

Why are there so many completed but empty housing units in the first place? People familiar with the dysfunctional workings of government will often tell you the reason is simple: a lack of cooperation and coordination. The government can, and does, build housing. But the utilities –water and electricity, specifically—required to have a viable housing estate, is the job of the local government. While we like to think of the national government as all-powerful, the reality is that LGUs are quite powerful, too: and if an LGU can’t, or won’t, do its part for any reason, the result is standoff that leaves the potential housing beneficiaries waiting in vain.

The problem with this sort of direct action is that our Constitution says the following: “The maintenance of peace and order, the protection of life, liberty, and property, and promotion of the general welfare are essential for the enjoyment by all the people of the blessings of democracy.” It also guarantees that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

Why is why suggesting to just give it to the occupiers, is problematic. NHA is among government agencies under the umbrella of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) now headed by Cabinet Secretary Chair Leoncio B. Evasco Jr.

When he proposed giving the units to the occupiers, he was warned of a thing known as technical malversation of funds.

As the Supreme Court said in Parungao vs. Sandiganbayan, this happens when “the public officer applies public funds under his administration not for his or another’s personal use, but to a public use other than that for which the fund was appropriated by law or ordinance.”

So the ball is in the hands of the government. Kadamay and friends have raised the ante, calling for all vacant housing units nationwide to be given away, an end to monthly dues, and access to electricity and water.

On April 4, prosecutors in Quezon City filed charges against 41 Kadamay members for trespassing and grave coercion. Police also filed charges against members of Kadamay for destroyed the fence of a lot along Apollo street in Barangay Tandang Sora when they forced their way into the property. The next day, the President said in a speech in Fort Bonifacio that he was urging the military beneficiaries to let go of their claims to the housing and let the urban poor occupying the houses to keep them.

But the matter has come to a head: and for radical groups, neither the spirit nor the letter of the law has any meaning; it is demanding political will and social justice from institutions used to providing only partial solutions.

Which brings us back to Mao Zedong and something else he said: “Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”

Fight over fundamentals

Last Monday, the Holy Week hangover was briefly interrupted by reporters scrambling to confirm the scuttlebutt that Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. had finally thrown in the towel and resigned. Evasco denied it. But not before he had spent a week wailing to the media that he had been reduced to seeing President Duterte only during Cabinet meetings, practically with no access. There was a pitiful tale of his waiting for hours at the airport to show the President some papers, only to be required to hand them over to Special Assistant to the President Bong Go, instead.

For the presidency, the coin of the realm is access. Put another way, you can have an impressive mandate on paper, but if you do not have access to the president, then the paper is worthless. Your mandate requires people to implement it, and guard it against other personalities and agencies eager to expand turf at your expense. Someone’s access to the president’s ear can wield a veto of your mandate and, thus, hamper your ability to function. This is the dilemma of Evasco.

With his communist background Evasco dreamed of a movement that would create a new political vehicle entrenched in government through the proposed reorganization of the bureaucracy—a movement able to operate independently of the coalition of local barons whose loyalties are both expensive and fickle. Go, a skillful bureaucrat in his own right, seems to represent the political pragmatists and entrepreneurs who are not just skeptical but also hostile to such grandiose plans. Evasco was denied the funds to make his movement a reality; he was exiled to Mabini Hall, then buried under an avalanche of paperwork—the consequence of his equally grand empire-building which placed 12 agencies under his direct control—while being denied access to the President.

On the other hand, Go, as the gatekeeper to the president and head of the Presidential Management Staff, has unlimited access and has been using it to great effect versus Evasco (see my columns, Dec. 7, 14, Jan. 18, 25, Mar. 1). The scorecard? Evasco, Go, 2-all: Evasco was knocked out by Sueno on the question of building a movement with the support of Go; Sueno, failing to deliver on rallies and unwilling to give way to Chinese firetrucks, was knocked out by Evasco (perhaps with some help from Go); but Evasco’s person Halmen Valdez was knocked out of the National Food Authority (NFA), although it seems NFA people will also, uh, have to go (if so, a draw: a pyrhhic victory for Go, face-saving for Evasco).

The fight as it is played out in the papers is typically messy but has escalated beyond being mere intramurals over political resources. It is now about that absolute essential for living—rice. Evasco is for allowing private traders to bring in rice, even during the harvest season both for efficiency and as a safeguard against any possible shortfall in the harvest. Go and Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, are against this, to protect farmers’ incomes, and on the principle that government should retain its import monopoly on rice.

The problem is, government policy has basically been fixed for 81 years, ever since the National Rice and Corn Corporation (precursor of today’s National Food Authority) was established—that is, government monopoly on importing rice. Repeated controversies –and shortages—and bloating debt have led to calls for government to embrace the free market instead of continuing what has been proven time and again: sinking resources—to the exclusion of other programs—into the pipe-dream of rice self-sufficiency, and being unable to competently warehouse and distribute rice (not to mention moving too slowly, and often too late, to fill shortages when they occur). The Foundation for Economic Freedom and individual economists have recently spoken up forcefully on this.

A case in point: Since the 2016 campaign, much has been said about how millions have emerged from poverty, thanks to programs like the Conditional Cash Transfer, but how easily those individuals could become poor again. Most of all, how despite the growth in the economy, poverty remains entrenched. One reason suggested for this is, gains in income are essentially canceled out by high food prices fostered by the continuing political obsession with rice self-sufficiency.

Congressional cat fight

In the Congress of cats, a full-blown cat fight is going on. Overlooked in the hissing between Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Rep. Antonio Floirendo Jr. and their lady friends was the political tidbit that supposedly sparked the fight in the first place: the suspicion that Floirendo was campaigning for Alvarez to be replaced by Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

But just because Arroyo may have decided to accede to the President’s wishes and remains relatively quiet doesn’t mean she isn’t busy. More than most, she knows how to bide her time and how to accumulate the nuts and bolts of power. What is the speakership today if you are the best-qualified to be premier tomorrow? The ongoing catcalling in the House is only of interest to the extent that it diminishes Alvarez, reducing him as a contender for prime minister in the future. A far more productive use of time is to quietly put in your people without raising a fuss—Alfonso Cusi in energy, Andrea Domingo in Pagcor. Politics is perception, and you can pump up the perception they can serve the President today but be in positions of influence tomorrow when the prospect of being prime minister dawns.

Less talk, less mistake, as Genaro Magsaysay famously advised. Look at what’s happened to poor old Fidel V. Ramos who can’t stop talking, which only reveals how often he has been shortchanged by the president he helped install.

The real question is, how did it so quickly come to pass that President Duterte’s anointed Speaker has to worry about his job security? The Speaker and former First Gentleman Miguel Arroyo may look like twins separated at birth, but the former seems to lack the people skills of the latter. Rep. Ronaldo Zamora once purred: “Politics is about helping people”—so long as you ask nicely.

Writing in 1970, Kerima Polotan painted a vivid word-picture of freshmen congressmen as “All brand-new diputados… already practiced in the art (and craft) of winning people and influencing friends. You could tell—they strode as though they belonged (and did they not?), crossed their legs, scratched their colleagues’ back, held languid cigarettes, laughed their rich solid laugh.”

Nearly half a century later, the cigarettes are now banished to back rooms beyond the prying eyes of the public, but the behavior is the same. The House of Representatives, the most exclusive fraternity in the country, operates by a code of conduct tougher than the nominal rules suggest. If there’s one thing congressmen hate, it’s being taken for granted. The only thing they hate more than that is to be told what to do without being given the opportunity to save face.

Some congressmen have complained that the Speaker demands obedience without so much as a token effort at face-saving courtship. With so many important votes coming up—including the shift to parliamentary government, whether or not it includes federalism—demanding obedience will invoke the law of diminishing returns. It will become harder and harder to herd cats. Why not find someone more considerate and willing to share?

Because there is only one permanent party in the House—the administration—the real action takes place behind the scenes, among the different blocs with their respective leaders, Japanese-style. You can be sure the congressional recess has these blocs abuzz in their various watering holes, foreign and domestic, counting votes and calculating the odds.

Jose Cojuangco Jr. once recounted a practical lesson about campaigning that was given him by his mentor, Speaker Cornelio Villareal who asked his help in his candidacy for the speakership. Asked how to go about it, Villareal told Cojuangco, “First, you ask them what they want. And you promise them that you will give it to them. That simple.” One such promise, easy enough to make, is: We won’t hold any “conscience vote” against chairmen.

The clincher, of course, is the president. In Raissa Robles’ important book, “Marcos Martial Law: Never Again,” she quotes Villareal (a decade into martial law) wryly commenting in a party that Marcos had convinced them to support martial law because they’d all automatically have seats in the new Batasan “and we believed him.” Do congressmen really believe the leadership of the House is entirely up to them?

Congressmen behaving badly

Manolo Quezon – The Explainer

Posted at Apr 04 2017 05:20 AM

What is there to say about the ongoing cringe-worthy public quarrel between Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and Rep. Antonio Floirendo Jr.? Maybe only this: it’s just the latest in a string of stories that could be titled congressmen behaving badly.

But just like the sort of tabloid-type stories recently hogging the headlines, what congressmen think of themselves –as distinguished ladies and gentlemen, if your honors please—is not necessarily borne out by the facts.

For example, woe to any citizen who makes the mistake of not calling a congressman “your honor.”

But as the gentleman in the barong tagalog and white pants you see on your screen, walking ahead of Douglas MacArthur once revealed, congressmen have no right to be called “your honor.”

According to that man, whose name was Jose E. Romero, one-time majority floor leader of the National Assembly and later, Secretary of Education, congressmen being called “your honor” is a case of being lost in translation.

What actually used to be the case, he said, was when legislators still debated in Spanish, they called each other “su Honoria,” which is more properly rendered in English as “the distinguished gentleman.” But people literally translated it as “your honor,” which is a term of address only two types of people are entitled to: judges, and the mayor of Manila.

But try telling that to our lawmakers. The point is, there is a difference between having a position and acting in accordance with that position.

In the speakership battle of 1922, Manuel Roxas ended up winning but quickly learned that respect wasn’t automatic.

In one heated squabble on the House floor, Speaker Roxas suffered the indignity of a fellow congressman coming up to him and kicking him in the shins. Think of it: this was sixty, seventy years ahead of the fistfights we see on TV in Russia, Korea, or Taiwan.

The 1920s was an interesting period, at least if you judge it by the editorial cartoons coming out in the Philippines Free Press at the time.

Its editorial cartoonist loved to lampoon the scramble for power, such as the scramble for committee chairmanships in Congress.

But the Free Press cartoonist was particularly savage in lampooning the bad behavior of the congressmen. Kicking the Speaker in the shins was nothing compared to what else used to go on: fistfights and the pointing of guns at each other, for example. That is, when they weren’t busy pointing their guns at anyone else who offended them.

The era before martial law had even more pointed commentaries in the Free Press, courtesy of its editorial cartoonist, EZ Izon.

You can track the terms of abuse current at the time by the cartoons Izon drew. Perhaps it was inevitable that love of the pork barrel led to cartoons like this one, entitled self-portrait of the politician.

By the early 1970s the political zoo had expanded to include the crocodile, an equal opportunity animal not restricted to Congress, but every institution, it seemed.

Where did all this pictorial abuse come from? Just like today, the process was helped along by our distinguished representatives themselves.

This was an era when Nick Joaquin, writing in the same magazine, penned an unforgettable word portrait of Speaker Jose B. Laurel Jr. He wrote how, in one late-night session, Laurel, perhaps having recently refreshed himself in one of the Roxas Boulevard nightclubs congressmen liked to visit, showed up drunk and proceeded to wrestle with the microphone.

To be fair to Laurel, he had pretty good reasons to get roaring drunk. Who wouldn’t end up drinking, with a President like Ferdinand Marcos? Laurel had helped recruit Marcos into the Nacionalista Party, but what he got from it was Marcos plotting with his former partymates, the Liberals, to oust Laurel and replace him that mummified-looking guy on the right, Cornelio Villareal, who was from the Liberal Party, even if Marcos was now a Nacionalista.

All of these intramurals were taking place in the late 60s and early 70s, when radicalism was on the rise, and hippies weren’t about to be respectful to their elders. In 1970, the House of Representatives got so fed up with students heckling congressmen that it built a bulletproof wall in its Session Hall to protect its members from the public.

But let me close with another of EZ Izon’s editorial cartoons before martial law.

This drawing says it all. To those whom much is given, little seems to be expected. Recently, the New York Times has gotten crucified because of the word-portrait it painted of the son of a governor who grew up to be a longtime mayor, and now president. But that isn’t a unique picture. It is the picture, as political scientists will tell you, of the vast majority of congressmen, too.

Unless you’re a saint, chances are every one of you watching this, has behaved badly sometime in the past. Assistant Secretary Banaag advises all of us to remember our elected leaders aren’t priests or saints, after all. This is true. Maybe she should have added something else. Not all of us who’ve made mistakes have bodyguards, either. Which, at the end of the day, is why congressmen can behave badly, and the rest of the country can’t. It’s the luck of the draw, after all.